As I’m sitting here thinking where to start the first thought that came to mind was that too many of us stand staring at the exit and miss the opportunities of where we have just arrived. Then I realized that’s not true. Those are the situation we talk about. Those are the ones that get the most attention. Those are the ones that feel like we’ve exited instead of entered.
As a Master Action Learning Coach, I see new teams enter a new way of being all the time. The discoveries they make take them to a better way of processing together. Because these shifts are discovered by the team versus just being told what they are the team owns the new behavior. There is no sense of lost for the old behaviors, just a sense of power as they enter the new behavior.
A friend asked me yesterday, what was the most powerful session I had ever coached. Having coached hundreds of teams at this point it is hard to pick a most powerful; first because they are all powerful sessions; and second because they are powerful in different ways. From a transformational aspect, I told him, it was a team that the trust and ability to communicate was effectively non-existent. By the time we finished it was at 100%. Years later team members still talk about the discoveries they made during the Action Learning session. How the sessions opened their eyes and that the way they were was great to leave behind, and the way they are has made them more effective and productive in all aspects of their lives. There isn’t a sense of exiting for them, just the sense of entering a new way of being.
As you move through the transitions that are life, do you see the exits or the entrances? Reflecting back now, what’s a time that you now realize you entered something new without noticing that you had exited?
